There Are Atheists Who Acknowledge the Existence of the Creator of the Universe

There are no gods to an atheist because no entity- abstract or concrete- is being elevated to a divine status (deity, deification) . So the atheist lacks the belief in deities simply because he is godless or without a deity (atheos) , nothing is a god or deity to an atheist . Simple .

Atheism is therefore , the rejection of deification . Yes , there are atheists who acknowledge the existence of intelligent source(s) of life on earth (Raelism) and there are those who believe the universe is created (defence of this stance comes , as they say , from the first cause argument) but they don't take the First Cause as a deity .

If you deify something or see it as a god , you are a theist ; if you don't see anything as a deity or god or deify something , you are an atheist .

Example

The pantheist sees the universe as a deity or a god , as an atheist you are not saying the universe does not exist because it is a deity , you simply reject deification . Use this simple logic to understand whatever I wrote above , it can be applied to just anything .

To prove this , here is a snippet by Pew Research revealing that indeed there are atheists who acknowledge the existence of the creator of the universe but they don't see it as a God or deity